Musings on the 9 June 2020 ~
or the joy of being TV-free (Part 1)

Published: 9 June 2020

“It was, undoubtedly, one of the best things that I ever did ~ throwing the telly out. To be honest, I did not exactly throw it out; we dispensed with it.” These profoundly philosophical words were delivered to me back in the pre-coronavirus year of 2018 by Colin, a friend and colleague. Although he lived his life free from the encumbrances of a TV set, he was still haunted and persecuted by the dreaded spectre of the TV licence and those who sought to uphold it, come what may. This is his story:

C: We were living in temporary accommodation whilst the property we had purchased was being renovated. The rented house came complete with no TV aerial. We assumed that we would not be living there for long (it turned out that we were in occupancy for a year) and, consequently, arranging for the aerial to be installed was put on the back burner and left there until it just vanished with a poof.

Life without television

C: That was almost 15 years ago, and we have never looked back. Obviously, each year, and multiple times in each year, we would receive those amusing reminders from the BBC Licensing Gestapo. Silly circulars spewed out by computers threatening you with all sorts of Spanish Inquisition-type ordeals to force a confession out of you that yes, yes, it is true ~ I am watching the BBC secretly and without a licence!

C: As I never had a hobby, such as voting Labour, I would amuse myself by collecting each threatening letter, noting how the totalitarian menace escalated from the first reminder, which was a gentle nudge, into strongarm tactics, first informing you that you were ‘under investigation’ and then that any day now you could expect a SWAT team to come busting into your home.

C: My favourite letter was the one that implied that a visit from the Grim BBC Licensing Reaper was nigh. It went along the lines of ‘Will you be in on Saturday 10^th March?’ ~ the implication being that this was the day when the Witch Finder General and his torturers would descend upon your home. The obvious answer to that would seem to be ‘no’? And I must confess that I was tempted to write back to these people who were destroying the planet with junk mail, saying ‘No’. But as they are an usually cunning lot those at the BBC, I decided that I would be in on Saturday 10^th March but never on any other day of the year. That would teach them!

C: A friend, well-meaning I suppose, asked me why I did not just write and inform the authorities that I did not have a TV. But, as with most things in life, it was not as simple as that. You see, I did have a TV, an old one, but as far as I knew it was incapable of picking up a broadcast signal. Our sole use for this mechanical contrivance was to use it as a monitor for watching DVDs. But, said I, as if I had been a conspiracy theorist all my life, I have this recurring nightmare, which is that after I have confessed in writing that I have a telly in the house but one that receives no transmission, I receive a visit from the nice BBC licensing man. He listens to what I have to say about the TV having no broadcast reception. Asks me to switch on the set, which I willingly do with a smile. He then thumps the top of the set and up on the screen pops, like some odious PC-revised corrupted historical drama, the BBC in all its biased glory.

“Time to be thoroughly indignant,” I suggested. “I have never given a penny to the Labour party, so why should I be forced to fund the BBC?”

C: Precisely. There were a couple of times in my life when the BBC dragnet closed in on me. One occasion was when I was living in London. I had just stepped out of my front door when I was approached by two officious-looking gentlemen carrying black clipboards.

“Excuse me sir,” one said, “we are from the BBC licensing authority …”

C: What is it about innocence that manifests guilt? For no reason other than, other than …

“Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Imp of the Perverse’,” I ventured.

C: Quite so. I instructed my female partner to ‘run for it’. We dashed across the lawn and hopped into the Range Rover, the two goons armed with clipboards hot on our tail.

“At least you were not in a bubble car,” I consoled. “If you have to make a getaway make sure you do it in style!”

Life without a television licence

C: The second ‘there but for the grace of God’ occasion occurred some years later. There was no telly registered at my address, so you can be sure that even in the middle of a postal strike the only post to get through was harassment mail from BBC licensing, oh, and from the Reader’s Digest.

C: In anticipation of the Devil’s invocation at any moment, I had instructed my son, who was about seven year’s old at the time, not to answer the door at any cost, as it could be a man from the British Bias Corporation. In fact, to help me in this endeavour I had employed to good effect, or so I thought, one of the licensing authorities’ very own letters, which I had Sellotaped to the inside front door as a reminder that at all times caution must be exercised.

C: My son, although he could not entirely comprehend the significance of this act, appeared to understand that this was a red flag, so all was alright there then until, that is, one morning when I was eating toast a knock came at the door. Caught off guard by the Marmite and the sun shining over the defunct TV set, I opened the knocked-on door and who should be standing there ~ yes, none other than the BBC licensing man.

“Hello, Mr X?” he asked.

C: I said ‘yes’ just before I clocked his identification badge. I said ‘yes’; I thought ‘Bugger!’.

C: He then went off into a sanctimonious verse and chapter explanation of how there was no registered TV set on the premises, concluding his officious speech with “do you have a television set” on the premises?

C: Never a borrower or liar be, so I interceded with although I was Mr X I was not the Mr X he was looking for. No, in fact, I was his brother. I was looking after the house whilst he was on holiday. Could he come in? Not really. It would not be right and proper, not with me being a mere house sitter. The officious looking man with his shiny ID badge reluctantly complied, advising me to advise my brother that he had been visited by the BBC television licensing authority and, make no mistake, they would be back. They were never seen again.

C: The third occasion of harassment by the Biggus Brotherus Clan took place when I was managing a shop. The shop occupied the ground floor, and we were resident on the top storey.

C: I remember the occasion as if I had seen it on television …

“Which, of course, you had not,” I proffered.

C: Absolutely not. I was in the ground floor office chatting to a customer when I saw on the security monitor a black car pull up outside. After a minute or two, the occupant bounded out of his car and began to walk towards the front door of the shop. There was something about his manner, even though I was seeing him on camera and at a distance, that I did not like, something … bumptious is the word.

C: He arrived at the office door, a young man in his mid-20s, black haired in a black jacket, round faced and already going to seed.

“Do you have a flat here?” he asked.

C: “Why, are you a flat fancier?”

“Sorry?”

C: “I’m sure you should be.”

C: I had spotted his ID badge.

C: He repeated his question.

C: “And who is asking?” I asked.

C: He thought for a moment. His stomach was definitely running towards podgey. Not good in a man of his age. And then, pulling himself up to his full height, 5ft 2, he announced grandiloquently and with great purpose: “I’m from the BBC licensing authority?”

C: “Get away,” I replied, “Well you should be ashamed of yourself. A man of your age should have a proper job.”

C: The smirk vanished: “Do you have a television?” he asked curtly, head swivelling around the office door like an aerial surmounted on a mythical TV license detector van.

C: I replied in the negative, and before he could deliver his next question, he having already taken a deep breath to do so, I added.

C: “Neither can we access broadcast television on the office computer, the radio, the toaster, the microwave, the vacuum cleaner or the lawn mower.”

“What about in the flat?” he snapped.

C: “What about what in the flat?”

“Do you have a TV up there?”

C: “Probably,” I replied, “but that’s the boss’s flat. He lives in London …”

C: This time he interrupted me, concluding my sentence mockingly with “…and he isn’t here at present and you don’t know when he will be.”

C: “That’s about the strength of it.”

“And I don’t suppose you can let me see inside the flat.”

C: “Oh no,” I confirmed, “my mother always told me to avoid strange men and, well, you are something to do with the BBC.”

“BBC licensing authority,” he announced, that little pride creeping back into his voice again.

C: Well, I had had about enough, so I told him that as I had not invited him into the premises, he had no right to be here.

C: He argued that this was a shop and not a private residence.

C: I directed his attention to a sign which said that the management reserved the right to refuse entry … and now I was exercising that right; adding that if he intended to return he should only do so in the presence of a police officer and don’t forget the warrant.

C: With that, he turned on his heel and stomped out of the shop, cutting a very different figure to the one who had marched in ~ except for the podgey gut. He had hesitated before he had left the car, but there was no hesitation now. On went the engine, into gear went the car, it shot backwards and then, with a flurry of gravel sparking up from the back wheels, off it went and him with it, and it was very good riddance indeed.

The moral of this story is that whilst you should beware of men bearing strange gifts ~ such as a gross of out of date Luncheon Vouchers ~ you need to be equally cautious of anyone wearing strange ID and be considerably alarmed by anyone, man, woman or other, who confronts you at home or anywhere else for that matter and tells you with a misplaced sense of pride that they work for or on behalf of a particular British broadcasting company.

*I am aware, of course, that the accepted taxonomy is ‘TV licensing authority’, but as the license fee purely benefits the BBC, in my opinion, and the opinion of many others, they are The BBC TV Licensing Authority ~ and other things besides.

Copyright [Text] © 2018-2021 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.